Lasers were pocking the ship just behind Billiard and Natasha, the beams passing so close over their heads that inevitably one would soon come in low enough to drill right through whichever suit it hit.
As Billiard slapped a second magazine into the Sorenson he looked back at Natasha. She was lying flat on the ground, her eyes tightly closed, and was trembling with fear. She had covered news for ten years, but this was the first time she had been part of the action. Billiard nudged her with his knee. When her eyes opened, he nodded in the direction in which they had seen the Dervlians. “What’s holding them up now?”
Natasha looked at him for a minute, then rolled over, raised her head, and scanned the meadow. “They’re trying to bring the wounded one with them, and it seems to be quite a job.”
Billiard sent a round toward the flash of a laser, then jerked around in surprise as he felt Natasha move. Calmly, although she was still trembling, Natasha got to her feet and, staying as close to the ground as possible, took off in a zigzag run toward the Dervlians. By the time Billiard got another half-dozen rounds away as cover fire, she had reached the lumps, wrestled the wounded one away, and was carrying it back to the ship in her arms.
For a second, Billiard stared at her in amazement, then sent another flurry of shots at the soldiers. He saw one of the lizard-like shadows jump a foot in the air as he heard the splatting explosion of a round that had connected with flesh and bone and blood.
By the time Natasha reached the ship, she was out of breath. She staggered as she tried to run up the airlock ramp with the Dervlian in her arms.
Billiard carefully set the Sorenson on the grass, then sprang up and ran into the lock to help Natasha. Laser fire splattered them with hot hull metal, but all seven got through the lock without being hit. The former Mercenary turned back to pick up the pistol, and just then heard Natasha scream.
He spun around in time to see a figure rushing out of the dim shadow cast by the Outsider: one of the soldiers had circled around, hoping to jump him from behind. Billiard had been unprepared for a direct attack, and that was all the advantage the soldier needed.
Billiard saw the gleam of a knife in the soldier’s hand just soon enough to step inside his lunge. Then they were both on the ground, wrestling for advantage. They rolled over twice, then came up with the soldier straddling the pilot’s chest, one hand clamped on Billiard’s throat and the other holding the knife, ready for the plunge which would slash the life out of the man under him. Looking up at the lizard, Billiard thought, So this is how it ends…
But now the soldier arched backward, his hand lifting away from Billiard’s throat.
Before Billiard could take advantage of the sudden break, blood splattered across his face—blood from a hole burned through the soldier’s head. The body hit the ground, sprawling across Billiard’s legs. Almost in shock from the event that had been his reprieve, Billiard looked up. Natasha was standing in the lock holding the pocket laser. Her eyes were wide and blank with horror, as she stared at the body on the ground before her.
Billiard pushed the body off his legs, and by the time he got to his feet Natasha had regained control of herself. Part of the reason for her quick recovery was the resumption of fire from the remaining soldiers, across the meadow. Billiard snatched up the Sorenson and ran up into the lock, pulling Natasha behind him. Hitting the cycle switch, he headed for his shell while Natasha ran into the small cabin where they had placed the inert form of the injured Dervlian.
Hoping that the warring factions on the planet had not had time to get any air support into the area, Billiard pointed the Outsider straight up and poured every bit of available power into the drive nodes. The ship screamed for space.
Once out of the planet’s atmosphere, Billiard turned control over to the computer, instructing it to head the ship for Earth and to take any evasive action necessary to avoid contact with other ships. Then, unexpectedly, he turned back and canceled the destination program, reprogramming for a landing on Patrick’s Planet. It was there that the guild contract said the surviving Dervlians were to be delivered.
With the computer in control, Billiard left the board and opened the door to one of the cabins. Natasha had deposited the shapeless form of the injured Dervlian on Billiard’s bunk and was holding autodoc probes over the charred laser wound near the center of the body.
“Anything I can do?” Billiard asked.
Grimly, Natasha shook her head. She took a deep breath, then said, “The autodoc’s got the right tapes. It’ll tell me what to do. If we can keep it alive, we will. Otherwise you’re going to be making a light delivery.”
Billiard stood looking at the woman for a moment, then turned and left the room.
Five hours later, the computer readouts showed they were nearing Patrick’s Planet. Billiard taped a customs declaration for broadcast once they made dropout, and just as he finished, Natasha came out of the cabin.
She took one look at Billiard, standing in back of the shock shells, then walked up and leaned against him as if she were completely worn out and simply had to use another human being for support.
Billiard brushed his hand over her hair. “Thanks for what you did back there.”
“If I hadn’t done what I did, we would still be back there, on Quithia. I was saving my own skin, too.” A little of the old fire had returned to her voice as she looked up at him, but she did not move out of the circle of his arms.
“And when you went after the Dervlians?”
“Well, I had to do something,” she said sharply. “Otherwise, we’d still be sitting back there waiting for them. Talk about people with a death wish. I’m surprised they’ve survived as a race.”
“Where did you learn to use an autodoc? That’s not exactly the training you’d expect a newscaster to have.”
“I did a piece on military medicine once, and that was a part of it. I guess I retained enough information. It wasn’t any big thing.”
“For you to take care of a slug?”
Natasha looked mad. “Don’t call it that. It’s a Dervlian, not a slug.”
Billiard smiled down at the girl in his arms just as the emergency signal flashed on the communicator. One sharp expletive fired from his lips, then he took his place at the control panel. The message had come in on the priority channel and was recorded by the computer. Billiard punched the button for playback.
MERCENARY GUILD TO MAJOR BILLIARD, COMMANDING FREESHIP OUTSIDER. MERCENARY GUILD TO MAJOR BILLIARD, COMMANDING FREESHIP OUTSIDER. RETIREMENT CANCELED UNDER PARAGRAPH FOURTEEN. REPORT IMMEDIATELY, SITUATION DELTA. REPEATING: MERCENARY GUILD TO MAJOR BILLIARD, COMMANDING…
Billiard cut the message off and immediately began punching new orders into the computer.
“What was that all about?” Natasha asked. “What are you doing?”
“Heading for guild headquarters.” The warmth that had unexpectedly begun to develop between Natasha and Billiard had by now completely evaporated. “Please go back to my cabin and strap yourself in.”
“Why? What the hell is going on?”
“Situation Delta.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that it’s the emergency-alert signal for the guild; and we were all trained in what to do if the signal was ever given. To the best of my knowledge, in the five centuries the guild has been in existence, it’s never been used.”
“Where are we going? What about the Dervlians? The one back in the cabin might not make it all the way.”
“He’ll have to, ’cause we’re not making any stops.” Billiard slapped the execute switch on the control panel, and with a groan of overload from the engines the Outsider changed course. Destination: Mercenary Guild Headquarters—Earth.
II
“Look, I don’t give a large rat’s ass what kind of emergency this is, or how badly you need a volunteer. I’m retired from the Mercenary Guild, I’m retired from the war business, and I’m just plain not inte
rested.” One of the three men in front of him, a politician representing the government of Earth, started to speak; but Billiard forestalled him, holding up his hand as he continued in the same forceful voice: “Frankly, I made enough in my years in the guild, especially on that last job on Bernard’s Five, to retire in any style to which I want to become accustomed—and for a lot longer than I’m liable to live. It took the Medteam almost a year to put me back together after Bernard’s Five, and there’s no way you’re going to put me through that sort of thing again.”
Billiard started to get to his feet, but the memories of Bernard’s Five had caused a physiological reaction. A fleeting grimace crossed his face as his weight settled on a foot that had been almost completely destroyed there; the pain caused him to hesitate slightly. Before he could turn, one of the men in front of him—gray-haired, dressed in a severely plain, black uniform, a man who looked like Central Vidcasting’s version of a general—held up his hand.
“Please. At least let us finish our explanation of the situation. And kindly remember that under Paragraph Fourteen of your contract with the guild you can be called back to active duty from retirement in the event of an emergency requiring your skills.”
“General, you’ve explained quite enough. Enough for me to understand that, when you get right down to where the power shuts off, you’re asking me to go out and get myself totally and irrevocably killed. Thanks, but no thanks. And may I remind you, General, that Paragraph Fourteen says I can only be recalled from retirement in the event that there is an emergency requiring my skills and there is no one else on active duty with those skills.”
As he stood there talking, Billiard was definitely listing to the right, favoring his healed-but-still-sore foot. He almost laughed at the expressions on the faces in front of him as the old men tilted their heads to keep him vertical in their frames of vision.
“But the computer said—”
“Bullshit! Also batshit and iguana crap! Any three-year-old crumbsnatcher’s seen a better story line at least fifty times on the Saturday-afternoon kiddie-keeper. For Chang’s sake, you could have at least dreamed up something a bit more original.”
“Major Billiard,” the Mercenary Guild general said, exasperation finally showing in his voice, “let me assure you that, trite as it may sound, the story is true. And it is equally true that the largest computer in this part of the galaxy—when fed all the relevant facts and data on everyone in our census banks—informed us that there were only seventeen men anywhere in explored space with a chance of completing this mission. Fifteen of those men have less than a fifty percent chance. One has a sixty-nine percent chance. And one has a seventy-three percent chance of success—you!”
The man on the right, the Federation representative who for several minutes had looked as if he were about to fall asleep, nodded his head in agreement with what the general had said, then quickly sneezed twice. Billiard began to suspect that the man appeared to be falling asleep because he was warped on something.
“If what you have been telling me about this job is on the level, just how the hell can anyone be expected to have a chance at completing it?”
In spite of himself, Billiard was interested in what they were saying, interested in the facts they had presented. Overlying his interest, however, were thoughts of what might develop between him and Natasha once he got away from these panicky old men—thoughts of what it might be like to take to bed one of the planet’s most famous sex symbols… “Major Billiard. Major Billiard!”
“Huh?” Billiard shook his head, pushing away the extraneous thoughts that had taken his attention from the men in front of him. “Sorry. I was thinking about something else. You were saying, sir?”
“Please pay attention. This is important!” the Federation representative said in a querulous voice.
“If you take the assignment,” the general continued, as if he had not been interrupted, “you will have the best equipment science and money can provide. You will receive training such as no Mercenary has ever received—the best of everything.”
The general looked somewhat sour as he said the last words, as if the money were going to come out of his own pocket. In a sense, it was: as commandant of the Mercenary Guild, he was in charge of guild expenditures, and the guild was to pay for Billiard’s retraining and for his weapons. Earth was to supply the computer hardware that would be so necessary for the success of the mission, and the Federation was to supply the ship.
“And if I flunk out of training?” Billiard asked. “If I can’t use all your wonderful gadgets? If I fall down and break my neck on graduation day… ?”
“Then Anthony Orsino will take your place,” the general answered.
“Orsino? Who in the Seventh Hell is Anthony Orsino?”
“The man with the sixty-nine percent chance of success. A new man who just joined the guild last year, but who has already built up quite a reputation,” said the general.
“Oh. Well, at least it’s a lucky number. If he has to go.”
“If?” the general asked.
“Yes, damn it. If! And I’ll lay odds your super-computer told you that once I had thought about it for a while I’d be hooked. That I wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge, or some sort of crap like that. Didn’t it?”
“No, it didn’t,” the Federation representative said, a slight smile breaking the somber planes of his face for the first time. “As a matter of fact, the computer predicted there was a forty-one percent chance you would laugh in our faces and walk out even before we had a chance to explain the situation completely. When fed the data on your feelings toward that woman newstaper—Ms. Natasha wasn’t it?—the percentage was fifty-three that you would refuse… What about her, by the way? You won’t be able to continue any sort of relationship with her once your training starts.”
“Just as well. I have a feeling that starting something with her would end up like being nibbled to death by a butterfly. But just because I haven’t walked out on you yet doesn’t mean I won’t. So start explaining. And I hope you’re capable of making more sense than you have so far.”
“I think it will all become clear to you once you’ve had a chance to talk to the experts for a while. They can give you all the details and explain the ramifications. Actually, the whole thing is Dr. Hall’s baby, so let me call him in now. I’m sure you’ll learn a lot more from him than you have from us.”
The man from the Federation looked at his colleagues to see if there was any objection, then pushed one of the many inset buttons on his desk.
III
After meeting the general and the representatives from Earth and from the Federation, Billiard was fully prepared for Dr. Hall. He looked exactly like a theoretical physicist. Tall, thin, and slightly stooped, watery blue eyes obviously in need of surgical correction peering nearsightedly around the room, a wrinkled green coat clashing horribly with an ill-fitting orange jock. And, the ultimate anachronism, Dr. Hall had even found, undoubtedly in some museum, a pipe.
“Major Billiard,” the general said, “let me introduce Dr. Eustace Hall, who first uncovered the basics of the problem. Since the magnitude of the situation became apparent, he has been in charge of all research in the area.”
“Pleased to meet you, Doctor,” Billiard said, rising and extending his hand.
Dr. Hall glanced at him, then shook the proffered hand. The mercenary had been expecting a limp handshake from the man, a pressing of palms rather than a shake. Instead, he got a firm grip and a definite up-and-down shake, followed by a quick release.
“I hope you’ll be able to make a little more sense out of this whole thing,” Billiard said.
“I believe I’ll be able to oblige you,” the doctor said in a firm, somewhat high-pitched voice.
“Good,” Billiard responded with a smile, settling into his chair again while the doctor pulled a chair up to the table, “because I’m afraid these gentlemen have made the whole thing seem impossible.”
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p; “The whole thing seems rather impossible. But I assure you the situation is real—it does exist! As does the threat.”
“As I understand it,” Billiard said, “something is soaking up tremendous amounts of energy, and this is going to cause us problems.”
“That may be how you understand it,” Hall said with a grin that took the sting from his words, “but that isn’t quite the way it is. For one thing, it’s some-one, not something, and they’re draining energy out of our universe, not soaking it up. It’s disappearing from our, umm, I guess ‘continuum’ would be the best word, even though it isn’t at all accurate.”
“That sounds like a violation of natural law. Conservation of energy, and so on.”
“You’ll have to remember, Major Billiard, that a natural law is nothing more than a theory which works, most of the time.”
Hall poked around in his coat pockets, finally coming up with a lighter, which he applied to the bowl of the pipe. Seconds later, clouds of acrid blue smoke filled the room, causing a coughing fit on the part of the representative from Earth and watery eyes for the other three men. No one objected to the attack, however, which told Billiard quite a bit about how valuable the big shots considered Eustace Hall. “We observe the universe around us,” Hall continued, “then formulate laws to describe what we see. That doesn’t necessarily mean we have the whole picture, though—or even that we’re seeing correctly. So what we commonly call natural law is, at best, nothing more than a possibly incorrect and most probably incomplete description of a local phenomenon.”
“Okay,” Billiard agreed, holding up his hands and smiling, “I surrender. I’m supposed to be an expert on tactics and strategy, and I know how inexact that science is. So if you say your field is as open to error as mine, I’ll take your word for it. What is this energy drain all about, though?”
“To start with,” Hall said, settling down in his chair as though he were planning to spend a while there, “have you read anything about multiple universe theories?”
Through the Reality Warp Page 2
